Last night, I was laying in bed, and realized that I haven’t written a post in over a month, and considering the fact that I’ve had a lot of caring and sweet friends send me texts, messages and called wanting to know how I’ve been doing since coming out about our IVF journey…I figured I’ll update everybody.

I’m gonna be honest. I’m not doing fantastic, but I’m not doing horrible either. It’s been a rough couple of months, and as the time gets closer and closer to our first biopsy, my nerves are getting the best of me. I’m taking things day by day, and trying to stay distracted and busy, which isn’t hard right now because our apparel business is getting SWAMPED with orders! (SO grateful for that!)

Christmas is close, and as much as I’m not looking forward to it this year (we had planned on announcing a pregnancy to our families next week) I’m excited to see family and friends and take a break from my normal routine.

I’ve had fun decorating our house, this is our first Christmas at this house, and the first time I’ve had two trees! I got crafty with decor and made some signs, and ornaments for myself and several others! The only thing that would make this month better at this point, is if my hubby was able to be here more often. He works so far from our house, and with the snow, and horrible roads, I feel like I’ve barely seen him over the last couple weeks.

I’ve spent a lot of time working from our bed because I still have days where I’m in a lot of pain; but on the other hand, I have days where I have bouts of energy and I go and see my nieces and nephew, go shopping or take 4,235 packages to the post office. 🙂 I’ve taken up reading again, and have loved it. Reading is so relaxing to me! I received the book thats pictured below as a Secret Santa gift this past week, and I’m so excited to read it!

I hope that everybody reading this is having a wonderful holiday season, and has the chance to spend it with loved ones. Take advantage of this time together! It’s something that I know can seem so stressful, and like such a headache, but time with family is SO important, so take it all in, and enjoy it while you can.

For any of you who know my husband, you know that he spoils the heck out of me, every single day, and he has since the day we started dating. He does everything he possibly can to make sure I’m happy, healthy, and taken care of. He works his ass off so that I can stay home and chase my dream of owning my own business. He goes out of his comfort zone to do things that he normally wouldn’t do, just for the simple fact that it’s something I enjoy doing.

That being said, there has been one thing that I’ve been dreaming about giving to Matt since we got married, and that’s a baby.

I’ve been a nanny practically my whole adult life, Matt grew up around his moms daycare kids..we got this, right? We would be awesome parents!

Well, turns out, its not that simple. In our case at least.

Over the last several months, Matt and I have been going through a LOT, and it’s not something we’ve been public about, like at all. Our close family and friends know, and that’s about it (minus the amazing people I’ve met and connected with online). Recently, I started feeling the very heavy weight of keeping this all in, and after discussing it with Matt, decided that in order to help process it all out, I wanted to write a blog post about it, and share a little about what has been going on. Prepare yourself folks, this post is going to be long, and might not make any sense at all.

In July of this year, Matt and I found out after going through some pretty painful, awkward and stressful testing, that we have less than a 2% chance of having kids on our own. After taking that statistical blow to the face, we learned that our best and pretty much only option at this point, besides adoption, would be to go through IVF. (In-Vitro Fertilization) We wanted to put every effort in to have our own biological child, so after researching every possible thing involving IVF, we signed our life away (kinda literally) during a very intense appointment with the fertility clinic.

The next couple of weeks, we spent preparing ourselves for what we were sure was going to be one of the most challenging (physically and emotionally) experiences of our lives. I read a lot of books, and spent a lot of time on Google (don’t do that if you are going through this…seriously. Just don’t) Matt surprised me with little gifts of encouragement like my Murtle the Fertile Turtle necklace, and IVF themed socks. The day that our meds were delivered, I was literally pacing by our front door waiting for them (I don’t know that the FedEx man knew the importance of what it was that he was delivering) and then we spent a few hours organizing everything so that it wasn’t as overwhelming. There was a LOT of meds! A LOT.

After some more tests, more visits to the Dr. and what felt like 1,000 blood draws, we were finally ready to officially start the process of IVF. For those of you that don’t know in detail what exactly this process entails, I’ll sum it up for you in like one sentence. It’s a lot of injections, a lot of pain, a lot of emotions, a lot of confusion, worrying, waiting (omg the waiting is the worst part) and more tears than I would like to admit.

I had daily injections, in the morning, and at night, and they were not easy to do on my own. Matt became my medication administrator; and let me tell you, there is no way around these injections. You have to do them, typically at a specific time of day, or the entire process is a waste. It’s always fun having to go to the bathroom of a restaurant to give yourself a shot, sometimes two or three. Or to have to excuse yourself from spending time with family to go in a private room so that your husband can help with the difficult to reach spots (booty). It was a long process, and as the days went on, the pain increased (this was a good sign, it meant that the meds were working, odd but true).

We went through 11 days of this, 11 long days. I was exhausted. I was emotional beyond measure. I was in a lot of pain. The next step takes us to the most amazing place, and thats IVF of Michigan ❤ It is where we had the procedures that would ultimately lead to us (hopefully) getting pregnant. The staff was amazing, and excited for us as we went through each procedure.

For the first procedure, they put me under, and go in to retrieve the eggs that I had been working so hard to grow over the last 11 days. Some people come out of this procedure with 2-4 eggs, we came out with 20. That number alone made me cry, and was SUCH a relief. That just meant that our odds were even better for this to be successful. That hardest part was over, I was SO relieved. We finally had a chance to rest and take a break from all the meds. We headed home, and I did everything they told me to do. That included drinking 47 gallons of Gatorade and eating McDonalds fries…not joking.

Over the next 5 days, our little embryos worked hard in their little dishes to fertilize and grow. We got the update that we had 8 fertilized and healthy embryos on the fifth day (this is good, they want as many as possible to make it to day 5), another AMAZING number. We set the date for our transfer (this is where they put the embryos back in, and hope and pray that they stick). This was the day we had been looking forward to, for what seemed like forever. We headed back to IVF of Michigan at 6 in the morning and prepped for our transfer!

The process itself is very fast, but also very emotional. It takes place in an operating room, and Matt got to come in with me. He sat by my side the entire time. We got to see our 2 embryos on a tv screen, and watched as a nurse brought them in the room. Our amazing doctor talked us through every single step, and we got to watch as he implanted them back where they belonged. That was it. The transfer was over. We had 2 beautiful little embryos placed where one or both would hopefully snuggle up and take up residence for the next 9 months.

Then we waited. We tried to rest and relax and just gave it to God, knowing that there was no longer anything that either of us could possibly do to make this work. 13 days later, I went in for the biggest test of all, and that was the blood work that would determine whether or not we were pregnant. Blood work was at 7 am, I got the phone call at 11 am telling me that unfortunately our first round of IVF had been unsuccessful.

Wait, what?

I had spent weeks planning everything out, we had names picked out, we had plans on how we would tell our parents, and our families, I knew exactly when and how I would tell Matt, we had been so excited and SO hopeful that there was just no possible way this wasn’t going to work. Everything was perfect. We did everything we were suppose to do. We listened to everything the Dr. said. How were we NOT pregnant?

I was absolutely devastated. You’ll notice the pictures stop here because there was nothing more to document.

I didn’t want to have to go through this again. I didn’t want to have to go through the emotional ups and downs that I had been experiencing. I kept thinking to myself ‘what did I do wrong?’ ‘what could I have done to help our chances be higher?’

I cried. A lot. I cried so hard that morning that I could barely get the words out to Matt, who I unfortunately had to tell over the phone because he was back at work and I was home alone. I could barely breath. I had failed. My body failed.

Over the next few weeks, we stopped all the meds (we were still doing a daily injection, and I was taking some oral meds to help keep the the embryos healthy), I lost my job (super great timing huh), we had to tell our parents and the friends that knew that we hadn’t been successful. I looked up EVERYTHING on Google, trying to find answers.

We met with our Dr., who said he was just as shocked because everything had been perfect. He wanted to schedule me for yet another procedure where they would go in and take a look inside my uterus to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong that could have caused the embryos not to implant.

Shortly after, we were at the hospital this time, cool outfits, lots of pain meds and anesthesia and a small sense of humor (hence the gorgeous selfie) all in one. They even put us in room number 9 (Matthew Stafford’s number for those that don’t get it).

Procedure went great, they removed some extra tissue that had built up inside my uterus, and sent us home. We got the news that our 2nd attempt at IVF would have to be bumped back another month, while I healed from the surgery, which brought back the tears, because at this point, I was SO tired of waiting. A week felt like eternity, let alone another month? I’ll push through though, because it’s what the Dr. said is best.

About a week and a half later, I was laying in bed at 5 in the morning and got an email from the hospital that had the results from my procedure (they did a biopsy on the tissue) and it came back abnormal. I was barely awake, but I saw the words that I knew couldn’t be good. “Suspicious for endometrioid adenocarcinoma” I’m no Meredith Grey, but that means cancer. I immediately called our fertility doctor and as suspected, he said they found precancerous cells in the lining of my uterus, and also spots of cancer, and that at this point, we needed to pull IVF off the table until we go and talk to a colleague of his.

How the hell did we get to this point? We were suppose to be celebrating being around 10 weeks pregnant at this point, but instead, we were scheduling an appointment with an Oncologist. I was beyond scared at this point, and had no idea what to think, or say, or even feel. I was pretty numb to anything after this. We met with the Dr., well the Dr. and his team of 6 other people who told us what we already knew, but also gave us the gut wrenching news that not only was IVF being pushed back, but that there was no chance of us even trying again for at LEAST another 9 months. Turns out the type of cancer that I had was not rare, and it is easily treatable, but cancer is still just that. It’s terrifying.

So…here we are. I’m taking things day by day, I’m still in a lot of pain, I’m still worried, confused and sad. I have been carrying the weight (literally and figuratively) of this around for far too long, and I needed to get it out there. We go back in January, and then in March for a repeat biopsy to see if the abnormal cells are disappearing. I haven’t taken to Google this time, I’ve stayed away from researching this because I know that every case is different. I trust what the Dr. is telling me, and I am going to go with the plan of treatment, and be patient as we wait for my body to heal.

I’ve been a part of some amazing groups on Facebook that I’ve been able to share our experience with. I’ve gained some friends that understand exactly what this process feels like. I’ve been able to see them get pregnant, and announce genders, I’ve learned to just accept that it wasn’t the right time for us to take what I know is going to be a HUGE step in our life and to just be happy for those that are reaching that milestone before us.

I still cry. I still get mad. I still question every single thing we did and wonder ‘why us?’ but every day is just another day closer to the day when we will get to start round 2 and hopefully by then we will be emotionally and physically ready to handle it. One painstakingly heartbreaking round of IVF behind us, and many more days of struggle ahead, but being able to open up and share this with anybody who will listen, has been like a breath of fresh air, and its something that I’ve needed to do for a long time.

I appreciate those of you who have kept reading, and for those of you who knew before this, thank you for dealing with my madness.

Every year around this time, the stores start putting out their Halloween and Fall decor, and in the midst of all of that are those infamous ‘pumpkin carving kits’ that we’ve all come to love, right? Well, every year around this time, I am forced to see this product, and reminded that I could have been a world famous hand model for said pumpkin carving kit.

Wayyyyyyyy back in the day, the company that my mom works for created this product, and they asked me to help them out with some pictures for it. I was young, and got a free manicure out of the deal, so I said sure, why not?! I spent the day in this cool little studio, carving pumpkins, holding candy, and getting tended to like all the stars too. Juice boxes and all.

The product hit the stores, and I didn’t realize how cool it really was, til i was standing in line one day at Target, and this lady had one in her cart. I looked at her, kind of laughing, and said ‘That’s my hand, right there, the one carving the pumpkin!” She rolled her eyes, and pulled her child behind her. “No seriously, it is! Look at the freckle on the right hand, and look at my right hand!” Still, she wasn’t convinced, so I told her to look at the company name and location, and sure as shit, there it was. She thought it was SO cool, and proceeded to tell everybody in line behind her, that it was my hand and grabbed my right hand to prove it with the freckle.

This was it. This is what it felt like. The feeling I had been waiting for all my years of training in middle and high school theater class. I had made it. I was a star.

Turns out, I would end up being a one hit wonder. They pulled the product off the shelves within the first year or two ((I don’t remember exactly, as I was going through an intense therapeutic routine to manage my denial)) That was it? That was all the time as a famous hand model that I was allowed? Psh. I’m not going to let a crashing career ruin my destiny. I will use Halloween as my platform to remind people that I am still here, that I still have hands, and that I stand strong for all other hand models whose career ended FAR too soon.

Oddly, enough some 15+ years later, I saw my infamous pictures on the shelves again while perusing the aisles the other day. Different company, because it seems they sold my images..but still. I’M BACK BABY! Have your people call my people, my calendar is filling up FAST.

You’re welcome for this very entertaining, and 100% true story. Now you can tell your friends and family that you are friends with somebody famous.

At this exact moment, exactly 3 years ago I had been awake for approximately 4 hours already. I was SICK. Like worst cold of my life sick. I was walking around a hotel in Frankenmuth, Michigan with my mom, half crying, half unable to breath, half exhausted and EXTREMELY excited. Why? Because it was my wedding day. All my family and friends were there, my soon to be husband was somewhere in that same hotel, most likely sleeping in the whirlpool tub that was in his room and 9 months of planning was finally coming together. Was I nervous, not at all. Scared? Hell yea.

Marriage is serious. Marriage is fun. Marriage is REAL. It is not something that should be taken lightly, and I have learned that lesson, along with SO many other ones over the past 3 years. Marriage helps you grow up, and that’s exactly what I needed.

3 years ago, I could have never imagined what the next 3 years would hold. I mean, obviously…nobody can foresee what their future holds, unless you are a psychic or the Wizard of Oz.

My husband saved me, he helped me out of a hole that I had been in for several years, that I didn’t even realize I had dug myself into. It wasn’t an easy path either, because I’m stubborn. I pushed back…at everything. I pushed back at the responsibility that came with marriage, I pushed back at the changes that were happening, I pushed back at growing up. Looking back now, it’s funny to me, because the lessons I had learned, I am now passing down to others in my life, and it feels so good.

Our wedding day was absolutely perfect. I had planned everything down to the tiniest little things, and it was so cool to see it all come together. Matt and I wrote our own vows, and I wanted to leave mine here as a reminder of how I was feeling that day:

Matt,

Just over a year ago, you and I decided to meet up at Ford Field for the first time in a very long time. Looking back, that was the best decision I’ve ever made, because the second we went our separate ways, I knew that I wanted to marry you. I couldn’t believe that it came to me that easily, but I did know that I wanted to see more of you, and that’s exactly what happened. From that moment on, I haven’t been able to take my eyes off you.

I remember asking my friends, and family if what was happening was real. I was smiling literally all day, had never laughed more in my life, and was enjoying every single minute with you. I wondered when it would get old, or when that phase would pass, but I am so happy to say that it still hasn’t.

You have changed not only my life, but who I am as a person. You’ve held my hand when I needed it, explained things when I didn’t understand and accepted into your life some of the most important people in mine.

You are the most loving man I’ve ever met, and I am honored to become your wife. Your sense of humor is what gets me by on a hard day. You are smart, responsible, and able to keep me grounded, which most people know, is not the easiest task.

I promise, as your wife, to love you (more than I love pickles, and my phone) every single day of my life, I promise to support you and your undying love for the Detroit Lions, I promise to laugh with you, cry with you, hold your hand when you need it and be the best wife and friend I can be.

From this point on, I can say that I have no idea where our lives will lead us, but I am okay with that, because as long as I am with you, I will go any direction we are pointed in. I look forward to a beautiful life with you, Schwartz, Franklin and lots and lots of kids.

I love you.”

To those of you that are reading this…if you are in a place in your life where you think that things are never going to change or get better. Heres a little advice…stop worrying so much about how your life is going to play out and take part in whats happening right now. Do things that scare you, say yes more often, and don’t just follow the crowd. I stepped outside what I THOUGHT was good for me, and I started doing things that were unlike anything I had done before. That’s what led me to Matthew, and what has gotten me to where I am today.

To those of you that are engaged or in a serious relationship…ENJOY it! Be happy in the moment, and instead of worrying so much about making sure the world knows how happy you are, TELL YOUR PARTNER. Make them feel like they are the only one that matters, not that every body on your friends list trumps them. Don’t let wedding planning, or petty arguments bring you down. This is suppose to be a memorable time, and let it be that!

To the lucky ones, who have found their soulmate and have exchanged vows, and started down the same road I’m on. Congratulations and KEEP GOING! I hope you realize how amazing marriage truly is and remember that even though you may hit speed bumps, and there will be a lot of them, that you’ve got somebody to go through it WITH you. Take advantage of that!

Happy anniversary to my husband, my best friend, my person, and the one that I will always love more than pickles and my phone.

An epileptic cat, a rescue dog, and a new house with a flooded basement.

Wait, thats not how it goes? Well. It’s how it went for us, and you know what? I am 100% ok with that.

Recently, I’ve (along with a lot of you I’m sure) have been noticing a lottttt of pregnancy announcements on Facebook. Of course, every time I see one, I think to myself ‘awwww how exciting!!’ Then after a little while, and seeing like 42 more announcements, I started to think about how Matt and I are about to reach our 3rd wedding anniversary.

In most couples, you follow this path thats kinda just been carved out for us, right?

You fall in love. You get married. You have kids. You all live happily ever after.

It seems that we have taken the wrong path then, because we fell in love, we got married, but instead of kids ((which I’m sure a lot of you thought would happen right away given my ‘career’ as a child whisperer)) we adopted pets, traveled, had plenty of ups and downs, bought a house, and just kept living life together.

So today, I was sitting in our living room, deleting a LOT of pics from my phone and I came across this one of Piper that I had taken on the day that we got the keys to our house. I decided to take the same picture today, and when looking at the two, I realized that in just 9 months of living here, it seems we have created an entirely new life.

We have changed almost every room in this house from what it once was. Our old house looked NOTHING like this one. Most of the furniture is new, the decor is new, it’s a fresh start.

I decided to go around and take more comparison pictures to see how much things have changed, and reflect a bit on all that we’ve been through since moving in.

Above is the basement before we bought the house, so what it looked like when the previous homeowners lived here. About 4 days after we had received the keys, we came to the house to look at some stuff before we actually moved in, and we walked into a very flooded basement. Leading to this:

That is a SMALL look at what the basement looked like. Let’s just throw out there that we had NO intentions of doing anything to the basement for awhile because it was already finished. Well, the flood changed that, we had to pretty much gut the entire thing. Let me just tell you…nothing brings down the excitement of buying a new house better than having to destroy it a week later and go through some of the worst stress ever in life. Not kidding.

This is what the basement looks like today. This is the only spot in the house that looks something similar to our old house. Ignore the blinds, we tried to make it look nice but Schwartz insists on destroying anything with a string. So we just let him go to town. Taking these pics makes me realize that we need to spend more time down there. I love that couch, and it just has that ‘original’ feel to it when we are down there. Kinda like being at the old house.

Now lets move on to my absolute favorite part of our entire house, and what was probably the most stressful, drawn out, and daunting process ((more than the basement)). The kitchen. This was the only thing we planned on updating when we bought the house, and it was only suppose to take a couple weeks. Well it took almost 2 months, and there are still things that we haven’t finished! Matt and I picked everything for this kitchen out together, and it was actually a lot of fun. He gave me the wheel, but I definitely wanted his opinions and thoughts on everything.

If you’re still reading, you’re probably wondering how I went from talking about the path of life, kids, and pets to showing you pics of our house….right? Probably, because I’m asking myself the same thing.

Here’s the thing, and this is literally the only thing I wanted this post to be about. My husband.

Matthew works his ASS off every single day, all day long, to allow us to have the life that we have. There is nothing more that I want in this world than to give Matt adorable little munchkins. However, on the flip side, I want to be able to live life with him, adventure together, and enjoy the time that we have together before we have little bearded redheads flying around this place. We may not be on the same path as everybody else, I like to say that we took the backroads, but we will get there. One day. For now, I look around at all that we have done in the 4 short years we have been together, and how much we have grown and I am so thankful for every single part of it.

I saw this quote on Pinterest today, and it started an hour long thought process about one specific thing, and I decided I wanted to write on it, and try to expand hoping I can reach somebody who might be feeling the same way. Isn’t that a big goal in life? Trying to find people that can relate, or for people to say ‘I know exactly what you mean!’ when you tell them something?

Big things often have small beginnings. What’s the first thing that you think of when you read that? For me, it was our business. OUR business. Our BUSINESS. I’ve just had one of those weeks (yes I’m aware its only Tuesday night) where I am so excited about all that is going on. We’ve been busy! Which is good in this line of work eh? It’s such a great feeling knowing that all the hard work, and time that we’ve put into this little idea is starting to pan out.

Let’s recap a little bit. Nine 16 Designs is the name of our apparel business. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. It was an idea that I rambled off to Matt one night while having drinks, and it wasn’t the first time I threw something out there like that. I was always saying that I wanted to run my own business, start a company, coordinate events, do SOMETHING that I had a passion for. But was that going to ever happen? Probs not. Because it takes money to start a business, it takes time, and a lot of work. Like a LOT.

When we first started, I had no idea what I was doing, like NO idea. I’ll admit, I got super frustrated like 2 hours into trying to get it all figured out, and almost quit. No joke. A for effort right? No.

I had goals. I wanted this business to SKYROCKET. I wanted to take all that I learned as a Beachbody coach, and social media networking and let that build our business. I had expectations. As we all do when starting a new venture. Then reality set in, I realized I wasn’t Insta-famous, or going to be on the Ellen show anytime soon, so this was going to be a lot harder than I thought. I’m going to be honest. I’m still extremely discouraged when I see that we have under 500 ‘likes’ on our business Facebook page, or just over 400 followers on our Instagram. HOW AM I GOING TO REACH CUSTOMERS?! Oprah got famous without social media, so I can to!

Seriously though…this is what I’m trying to say. You can be a business owner, a makeup consultant, a health and fitness coach, a designer, a crafty type etc. and might have the same worries that I do…and thats the fear of not being successful in whatever it is that we are putting our heart and souls into. You just have to realize something….starting small is starting somewhere. Don’t make your business all about your business, make it about you…your life…your reality. Thats the type of stuff that is going to help you grow.

Ask yourself this: Did you sign up to sell this makeup just because you want to make money? Or start these at home workouts because it’s what everybody else is doing? Do you share pics of you enjoying wine and then tell people you’re getting paid to drink it because you heard you’re going to be a millionaire next year? Are those oils REALLY paying your bills?

Is what you’re doing making an impact?

I got to make this shirt today….and all I could think about while making it, was that I get to be a part of such a HUGE moment for this family. This is how they are telling their family that they are expecting another baby. How awesome is that?

I’ve made shirts for ladies struggling with infertility, I’ve made mama to be shirts, birthday shirts for kiddos, bride to be shirts, and been able to talk to and get to know SO many people in the process. I put my heart and soul into this entire thing. From the minute I get the order, to the second I put the package in the mail. I’m doing it all, with my own hands. I LOVE THAT!

I know it’s going to take time for our little business to grow, but one day, I’ll be looking back on this and be amazed at how small our beginning was, but also how memorable as well.

Make sure you have a real PASSION for whatever it is you are doing. Don’t just do it for the money, or the perks. I PROMISE you that if you don’t truly love what you do, it will show. So if you are in the position that a large amount of people on social media are these days…if you are trying to promote something, sell something, share something etc., stop with ALL the sales tactics and just share with us why YOU love it and why YOU do it.

I’m sorry if none of this made sense. I’m just real proud of myself, and also super grateful for my amazingly patient and kind husband who has let me try any venture I come up with that has led me to this one.

I’ve been spending a lot of my ‘middle of the night thinking time’ trying to come up with a good and interesting topic to write about…and I’ve struggled coming up with something, as you can tell by my absence in between posts. Then, last night, it hit me. I’ve got like a million things to write about, but something has switched in me lately, that has me wanting to keep a lot of my life private.

WHAT?! You don’t think I’m talking about the Shannon that is a Social Media Master and also has a third hand known as her iPhone, right?! Keeping things to herself?! Say it isn’t so!

Alas, ’tis true folks. ‘Tis true.

I’ve learned a lot over the last several months, and one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned, other than the MAJOR one I went over in my last blog post, is this: Keep your life private! Simple as that! Obviously, I’m not saying that we should all build concrete walls around our yards, and never go out in public or speak to anybody…thats just weird. BUT! I am saying that if you sit back and really think about it, like LEGIT think about it….about 85.4% of your life DOESN’T need to be shared with every person in your life.

“Face your problems. Don’t Facebook them.”

Seriously. I have a lot of Facebook friends, like a lot. And I’ma be honest with you, I actually know and am friends with like 23% of them. I was a Beachbody coach for over 2 years, it was my job to network, and interact with people, and let me tell you something right quick. I am not mad about that at all! I LOVE connecting with new people. (Not the point of this story, so moving on) Being that I have a good amount of connections and friends on the ol’ FB, means that I see a LOT of posts.

Like, I honestly want to know what causes somebody in their 30’s, or older, to post something along the lines of this, as a status:

“I hate my husband, he is such a piece of shit. He’s been lying to me and doesn’t care about our children, or want to even be a part of their lives.”

Ok, s’cool…you’ve obviously got some anger up in that head of yours, but we don’t need to hear about it..and THEN like 13.2 hours later, I CERTAINLY don’t want to see a status of you and your jackass of a husband (or so you say) snuggling up at the cider mill with like 49 heart emojis. This makes you look really stupid.

Here’s the thing…keep the personal shit to YOURSELF. Deal with it on your own. Don’t put that vibe out there to the world of social media, and then make us all feel bad for coming down on Tom, or whatever his name is. Negativity sucks people in…so just don’t be negative where others can see. **Disclaimer: I made that status up, and I don’t know who Tom is, besides my Uncle Tom, and he’s a pretty cool dude.**

Back to the point of this post. My life is not perfect, like NOWHERE near it. Do I post on social media all the time, sure do. Do I put out posts about how much I struggle with certain things, or about the arguments I have with my husband, my friends, my family etc.? Sure don’t.

The pics I take, are ones that I take because I want to share them with people…you all know you want to see the cinnamon rolls I baked, lets be honest. Are there things that I would absolutely love to post about, just to even get it off my chest? Shit yea there is! I’ve decided to stop word vomiting every single little thing on my mind at all times though, because I was doing that to anybody that was willing to listen. Whether it be people on social media, whichever friend I’m hanging out with, the dude who makes a coffee for me at Starbucks…I honestly didn’t care, I just let it out.

I might have huge secrets that nobody knows, I might not. I might be a millionaire, and decided not to tell anybody. I might cry myself to sleep every night, but keep it to myself. I might have super special moments with those I love. I might not.

Who knows?

Moral of the story is this:

It will save you a lot of stress, and heartbreak…I PROMISE you. Share the good, share the funny, share the cuteness, and SHARE THE FREAKING LOVE! Just don’t share so much that you’ve got nothing left for yourself. But, I mean, I’m not your mom, I’m not gonna tell you what to do. I’m just sharing from experience.

It’s actually nice to share less about my private life and personal experiences and more about just life. Try posting about or talking about stuff that will put smiles on peoples faces, and not make them roll their eyes and say something like ‘oh here she goes again….” What if you died tomorrow, and the last thing people remember you by is from posting some pointless drama causing post, or hearing you talk badly about somebody? That would suck, eh? Ok, that was morbid. I apologize. But seriously, you don’t wanna leave that with people.

That’s all I got! Now I’m curious if I’ve got you all wondering what my big private secret is?! I don’t have one. So calm down.